Review: Notes on the Poet: A Little Book of Criticism by John Poch
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This book is a companion, not merely something to read.
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Zoom: Poetry of Faith and Doubt
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Like David called out to the Lord in Psalms, so too, modern psalmists wrestle with doubt and faith in the language of poetry. From Pádraig Ó Tuama’s popular podcast Poetry Unbound to Douglas Murray’s weekend poetry reflection Things Worth Remembering for The Free Press, there has been a resurgence in finding meaning and solace through the doorway of poetry. Spend three luscious hours reading and discussing 20th and 21st century poetry and how these words can hold us as we struggle with faith and doubt.
Read More“Tremble” and “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade”
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As we make our way through Lent, we act against the temptation to assume all forty of these days must be gloomy. In fact, in the Lenten sparsity, we find beauty and hope — and these poems and songs will point to exactly that.
Read MoreOctober Book List
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If you don’t know by now, I read A LOT.
People keep asking me what I’ve been reading lately so I thought I’d put them down in one post to share.
Read MoreA Discipline of Noticing
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I think of these words as a directive. They are my prayer for my vocation as a mother, that I would teach my sons to see the life at play in everything.
Read MoreThree Advent Poems
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I really enjoyed the process of writing these poems about the miracle of birth, hope growing in darkness and the journey to Christmas.
Read MoreVirginia Woolf's "I am Christina Rossetti"
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It is not only royalty who are allowed to use the royal “we” when addressing the masses, commoners are allowed too, especially if you are literary royalty such as Virginia Woolf. Woolf uses the royal “we” in her point of view right from the start in her essay, “ I am Christina Rossetti.”
Read MoreThe Annunciation
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No, this is not an abstract painting or ink blot test. I am standing before an angel.
Read MorePrayer of Thanks for the Drive Through Car Wash
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Find joy in life’s small moments of wonder.
Read MoreFour Hidden Places I’ve Found God
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In my practice of looking for God, it’s rarely in the spotlight moments that I find him. It’s in the small, hidden places that God chooses to reveal himself. Here are a few I noticed.
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Lost in Books
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My 5-year-old son and I are sitting side by side on the couch reading. I with Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood, a book I should have read long ago and he another A-Z Mystery. I have a bag of chips on my left and every few pages he raises his hand out, without speaking for another chip. My 7-year-old is elsewhere in the house, probably in the smallest space between two pieces of furniture, curled up with his own book.
Read MorePresent Presence
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My 5- and 6-year-old sons were in a week-long day camp during a break from school. The camp focused on “music and movement,” which is another way of saying it was a theater camp. Each week had a theme. The week my boys attended was Elvis week. They learned how to pretend to play the guitar and shake their hips. They had a blast.
The camp concluded with a performance on Friday. I arrived early and got a seat on aisle so I’d be sure to see both children wherever they happened to be on the stage. When performance time came I was taken aback when every single adult in the audience stood up, took out their phones and began filming the performance. There was no way I could see through the barrage of phones and iPads. I found it strange that I was the only person who was actually watching the performance, not the screen, but couldn’t see it.
The poet Wendell Berry speaks to this in his poem “The Vacation,” in which a man spends his vacation filming it, “preserving” it.
It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
I completely understand this phenomenon of being there but not being present. I absolutely suffer from it too. My mind is always running through a list of the next three things to do. I am always trying to see if the other person I needed to talk to about x is here in the room. Even when I look into the eyes of my little boys, telling me a sweet story they made up about their Lego creation, I am thinking about what I need to do next.
It is hard for me to connect with people in my life. I’m not sure if this is because of my chaotic childhood, my inability to trust people, my own anxiety, or all of the above. I am gregarious, fairly likable, open, but I never seem to actually get close to others. I think to myself, “I should take medication. Maybe this would help me to connect with others …” Or is this disconnection, this loneliness, what connects me to Christ and His sufferings?
When we are at last united with Christ, what will that feel like? Will He have time for me? Or will He look over my head for the next person in the room? I give Christ my symptoms of anxiety.
I honestly do not know what it is like to look into someone’s eyes and have them be completely present for me for more than a minute. The artist Marina Abramovic exhibited a performance art piece called “The Artist is Present” at MOMA a few years ago. In the piece, she offered herself to a “sitter,” a museum patron simply sitting across from her for a few minutes, as completely present, silent but meeting their gaze, never breaking it. The sitters’ responses ranged from nervous giggles, to iced stoicism, to tears.
The response to Abramovic was so powerful, it makes me wonder what it will be like to sit across from Christ. Will I giggle? Will I crumble? Will I meet His gaze? St Paul says that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I will be fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I feel that this is a promise, that I will be a new creation, that I will not reach for my phone to record my meeting, that I will not be thinking about how I can tell others later. I will allow myself to be loved.